Archives for April 2008

I lived through my very first earthquake in 1987 or thereabouts. I was working late in my Rockford, Illinois, cubicle, alone in the office with my editing assignments. I felt my chair move suddenly and swung around to confront some prankster who had dared sneak up behind me.

That’s when I realized I had experienced a rare thrill for a girl who had not yet traveled farther west than Denver. Until then, the earthquake concept was entirely abstract to me, even if my house in Des Plaines did shake from time to time, in fact quite frequently. Each time a freight train passed on the tracks along Mannheim Road or a jet took off from nearby O’Hare, windows vibrated and the glassware in my cabinets tinkled merrily.

Now that my daughter lives in southern California, I visit the West Coast a lot. I guess I’m used to the shaking and rattling from mundane little temblors.

So this morning I slept right through the earthquake, until it was all over but the shouting. My husband’s shouting, that is, yelling "What the hell was that?"